Elon Musk's Neuralink team is not first to get a monkey to control a computer
"Brain-control of computer cursors by monkeys is not new," Professor Andrew Jackson of the University of Newcastle told Insider.
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Elon Musk
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Elon Musk's Neuralink team is not first to get a monkey to control a computer
"Brain-control of computer cursors by monkeys is not new," Professor Andrew Jackson of the University of Newcastle told Insider.www.businessinsider.com
I know someone who knows some of the key people at Neurolink personally. They have been pursuing this for a couple of decades, what Elon brings to the party is large bags of cash and increased attention.
The brain research world is very interesting. My partner has been doing neurofeedback to try and reverse a number of brain injuries. One of the top therapists for it happens to be in Vancouver, WA (the guy who knows the key people at Neurolink). Her case is so complex and her reactions so odd that he's been consulting with two top brain experts on her case. One thing that baffles them is how she can perform as an attorney, Psychological counselor, and most recently neurofeedback therapist in training while her brain map is that of someone in a coma.
But I thought with Elon’s tweets he was a neurobiologist, physicist & chemical engineer
You mean, he’s just a businessman?
I know you're being sarcastic, but technically he actually is a Physicist by training. And he has self-taught himself to an amazing degree. He understands the technical details of all his businesses better than most CEOs.
But he has limits. His opining about the pandemic demonstrated he thinks he understands a lot about biology and medicine, but it's not one of his strengths.
uujjj2
Member
Elon Musk isn't a through and through science/engineering guy like, say, the founders of Intel, Sun, or Google. Elon Musk is best understood as a money man with a technical background, rather than a technical guy with money. He finds good ideas that have been sitting around, sometimes for decades, and pushes them to fruition through scale and radical cost cutting (which itself requires major technical advances). EVs, autonomous cars, solar panels, reusable rocketry, all of these have been worked on in California for a long time, but all of them cost too much for mass adoption. Elon Musk has made these things affordable to a much larger market.
The Vance biography of Elon paints a pretty good picture of him. When he started SpaceX he went to Russia with some other people to try and buy some old Soviet rockets. When it became obvious the people they were talking to had no intention of selling them any rockets and were just trying to milk them for some expensive meals, they returned to the US. On the flight back his two travel companions were sitting behind Elon who spent the whole flight working things out in a spreadsheet. About halfway through the flight he announced that rocketry was stuck in the 60s and they could do much better applying tech from other industries to rocketry.
He's actually good at that, applying existing tech in new ways, which is what a good engineer does. The same biography described him as a scientist with the heart of an engineer.
Elon does get his hands dirty too. At his first company, Zip2, he wrote most of the code himself. He's also had periods where he was hands-on at Paypal, Tesla, and SpaceX. There is a story that he once overheard someone at SpaceX complaining that Elon was asking him to do the impossible. Elon fired him and did his job for two weeks to show that he wasn't asking for the impossible.
There are very clearly limits to his genius, but I do think he is genuinely a genius and not just in financials. He is probably one of the most talented industrial engineers in the world alive today.
jeewee3000
Active Member
Respectfully disagree.
You make it sound as though what Elon has accomplished is easy enough (in the sense that others could have accomplished the same).
In the beginning Elon had no money and built Zip2 and Paypal from the ground up with his technical insights. A lot of times, technical insight is just that: combining and refining existing technologies. Rarely people "invent" something new independently, they stand on the shoulders of giants.
Just like Steve Jobs didn't invent the touch screen for the smart phone/tablet. He just thought it was a no brainer updating existing phones with touchscreens and worked from there, trying to morph phones into computers basically.
Elon has become a money man, but the technical insight is still the basic reason why his plans come to fruition. And of course he recruits talent to help build out his vision, that doesn't disregard his vision whatsoever.
uujjj2
Member
You claim to disagree with me but don't actually say anything different than me.
jeewee3000
Active Member
Just saying Elon IS an engineer through and through first and a businussman second. So I am on the other side of the fence as you.
uujjj2
Member
Here in Silicon Valley, it is the norm for tech company founders to have engineering backgrounds. So that's not anything unusual for Elon. There's exceptions (Palantir was founded by humanities majors) but most tech companies are started by tech people. Larry Page, Robert Noyce, Steve Wozniak, Andy Bechtolsheim, these are founders that were even more so technical people than Elon Musk. Larry Page actually coded the original Google search engine. Robert Noyce was the lab rat who actually was in the lab inventing the integrated circuit. Andy Bechtolsheim actually designed and built the original SUN workstations. By contrast, Elon Musk did not design the Merlin rocket engine, or the Tesla Roadster powertrain.
A snippet from an Elon Musk interview:
Does Elon Musk do some very technical work (code, design, etc.) at SpaceX? - Quora
He claims to spend about 80% of his time on engineering and design. He also said the perception is that he's a business and media guy, but he disputes that. Obviously there are details other people did. Writing the code for the first Google search engine is a task one person can do. I've single handedly written a quite extensive industrial software package over the last several years.
The task of designing and building a car or a space capable rocket is beyond the capabilities of any one human being. There just aren't enough hours in a year for one person to do everything. It is documented that Elon did come up with the complete proof of concept that led to SpaceX's early designs on his own with no outside help.
Does Elon Musk do some very technical work (code, design, etc.) at SpaceX? - Quora
He claims to spend about 80% of his time on engineering and design. He also said the perception is that he's a business and media guy, but he disputes that. Obviously there are details other people did. Writing the code for the first Google search engine is a task one person can do. I've single handedly written a quite extensive industrial software package over the last several years.
The task of designing and building a car or a space capable rocket is beyond the capabilities of any one human being. There just aren't enough hours in a year for one person to do everything. It is documented that Elon did come up with the complete proof of concept that led to SpaceX's early designs on his own with no outside help.
FlatSix911
Porsche 918 Hybrid
Elon almost gave up running Tesla in 2015...
electrek.co
Elon Musk reportedly tried to hire VW's Herbert Diess as Tesla CEO
Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly attempted to hire Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess to take his own role as chief executive...
electrek.co
CLK350
Member
I know it's kinda late, but here goes - maybe the mods could update that link on SteveF's page, the FIRST page of this thread - sort of cool to read that twelve years ago when both Tesla and SpaceX were just fragile embryos of an internet millionaire with "naively" good intentions.
" ..His motive is more than just making money. He says he is involved in SolarCity and Tesla Motors "because I’m concerned about the environment," while "SpaceX is about trying to help us work toward extending life beyond Earth on a permanent basis and becoming a multiplanetary species."
https://www.success.com/From-the-Corner-Office-Elon-Musk/
FlatSix911
Porsche 918 Hybrid
Well done, Elon... 'NASA rules,' Musk says as SpaceX wins $2.9 billion moon lander contract
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -NASA awarded billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's space company SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to build a spacecraft to bring astronauts to the moon as early as 2024, the agency said on Friday, picking it over Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics Inc. Bezos and Musk - the world's first and third richest people respectively, according to Forbes - were competing to lead humankind's return to the moon for the first time since 1972.
Musk's SpaceX bid alone while Amazon.com founder Bezos's Blue Origin partnered with Lockheed Martin Corp, Northrop Grumman Corp and Draper. Dynetics is a unit of Leidos Holdings Inc. "NASA Rules!!" Musk wrote on Twitter after the announcement.
The U.S. space agency awarded the contract for the first commercial human lander, part of its Artemis program. NASA said the lander will carry two American astronauts to the lunar surface. "We should accomplish the next landing as soon as possible," Steve Jurczyk, NASA's acting administrator, said during the video conference announcement. "If they hit their milestones, we have a shot at 2024," Jurczyk added.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -NASA awarded billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk's space company SpaceX a $2.9 billion contract to build a spacecraft to bring astronauts to the moon as early as 2024, the agency said on Friday, picking it over Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and defense contractor Dynetics Inc. Bezos and Musk - the world's first and third richest people respectively, according to Forbes - were competing to lead humankind's return to the moon for the first time since 1972.
Musk's SpaceX bid alone while Amazon.com founder Bezos's Blue Origin partnered with Lockheed Martin Corp, Northrop Grumman Corp and Draper. Dynetics is a unit of Leidos Holdings Inc. "NASA Rules!!" Musk wrote on Twitter after the announcement.
The U.S. space agency awarded the contract for the first commercial human lander, part of its Artemis program. NASA said the lander will carry two American astronauts to the lunar surface. "We should accomplish the next landing as soon as possible," Steve Jurczyk, NASA's acting administrator, said during the video conference announcement. "If they hit their milestones, we have a shot at 2024," Jurczyk added.
Mildly amusing based on the lander contract award: NASA Frantically Building Real Moon For Elon To Land On
PV4EV
Member
They should re-use the one from the original "moon landings", apparently located in a giant hangar at Edwards Airforce Base. Or am I getting confused with Capricorn One .. Hmmm ;-)
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israndy
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